And a related note, between this, and Notre Dame's defection yesterday, Big East basketball has taken yet another huge hit these past couple days. It's really sad. There's so little left. And it's unfortunate that if you don't play football, you're apparently not allowed to play basketball either.
I fully expect UConn to take a pretty harsh step back between the sanctions and now a major coaching change, although I feel Kevin Ollie could be a very good coach.

The Big East should abandon the idea of scavenging these mid majors from all over the country, albeit good ones like SDSU, and just pick up the rest of it's northeastern catholic basketball heritage bretheren and run the conference through that. Merge with the Atlantic 10, cherry pick from my beloved MAAC. And make a basketball exclusive conference that doesn't play BCS football. Georgetown, Villanova, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's. You'd probably have to give up Louisville and Cincy, which you may have to anyway the way football is going. Pick up UMass, Temple, St. Joe's, Butler, Charlotte, Dayton, Duquesne, Fordham, GW, Lasalle, Rhode Island, The Bonnies, VCU, Xavier, Richmond, St. Louis. Maybe grab Iona, Manhattan, Sienna, Cannisius from the MAAC.

You've got some nice natural rivals there. You're feeding off the northeast catholic basketball traditions. You've got a ton of small catholic, really good academic schools in the mix there. Those schools could maybe increase their profile playing so many games in and around Manhattan and Philly and DC, increase their recruiting prowess. Keep the tourney at MSG.

Let's play some goddamned basketball around here.

I'm quoting myself, because this is pretty much happening right now. They're not calling it the big east however. It appears that the 7 non football schools from the Big East are all leaving. They're picking up their ball and going home, not living and dieing by the whims of these football schools.

It saddens me, but I think my beloved Big East Tournament at MSG is a thing of the past. I was hoping they'd all hang together and scavenge the rest of the northeast, but reports sound like they're more likely going to sell themselves as a package unit to another conference. I've also heard they've been promised that they'll keep their automatic bid to the Big Dance whereever they wind up.